Different bloggers will be posting some musings, questions we're pondering, and maybe some announcements related to the philosophical community at Bethel University. Responses are encouraged, whether you're directly connected to Bethel or not. And be sure to like our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/bethelphilosophy

Sunday, November 30, 2014

There are many arguments for the conclusion that abortion is immoral, but some are more compelling than others. In today’s blog post, John Grandits (a Bethel graduate who recently
earned his MA in philosophy from the U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) considers one common argument and makes the case that most of us don’t in fact believe its central premise . . .

Consider the following argument against abortion:

1)It
is prima facie wrong to deliberately kill an innocent person.

2)Human
embryos are innocent persons.

3)Therefore,
abortion, which is the deliberate killing of a human embryo, is prima facie
wrong.

Although not always stated in this exact form, this
is a common argument made against the permissibility of abortion. Let me go
over each premise. Premise (1) states that deliberately killing an innocent
person is wrong. I include "prima facie" here because I want to leave
open the possibility that there may be circumstances in which, all things
considered, the deliberate killing of an innocent person is justified. However,
I will take it as uncontroversial that the deliberate killing of an innocent
person is wrong in the absence of overriding reasons.

Premise (2) states that all human embryos are
persons, a claim that is usually taken to be entailed by the more common claim
that life, or more appropriately personhood, begins at conception. Here,
"persons" and "personhood" are moral terms that are meant to
suggest something with "full moral status," i.e. the moral status
that we normally take adult human beings to have. Specifically, if we believe
that human embryos have full moral status, that means we believe they should be
given the same weight in our ethical decisions as adult persons. For example,
if we have moral obligations to protect an adult person from being killed or to
prevent them from dying in a certain situation, the same obligations hold for a
human embryo in those situations.

As premise (2) is commonly defended by political
conservatives (at least in the United States), let's call this the conservative
claim. The conclusion, then, is that abortion is prima facie wrong - wrong in
the same way the deliberate killing of an innocent adult person is wrong (hence
the common saying, "abortion is murder").

Proponents of abortion can respond in different
ways to this argument. They can concede (1)-(3) but argue that, in some or all
cases of abortion, overriding reasons to premise (1) are present. This would
include those who argue that the rights of the mother trump those of the
embryo. Another way to respond would be to argue that premise (2), the
conservative claim, is false; that is, they can argue that embryos are not
persons and, as a result, don't have the sort of moral status necessary to
protect them from being deliberately killed. A third way to respond--and one
that in some ways I find most interesting--is to attempt to show that very few
people, if any, actually believe the conservative claim. This is the argument I
will present below.

If you're familiar with abortion debates, you've
probably heard about burning-building thought experiments. These thought
experiments usually ask you to imagine a scenario in which two buildings are on
fire, one of which has a living human baby, the other of which has a container
filled with lots and lots of human embryos. The question is posed: assuming you
only have time to save one, do you save the baby or the container? Most of us
respond by choosing the baby.

In an article entitled, "The Scourge: moral
implications of natural embryo loss," Toby Ord updates this
thought-experiment by showing empirical data that something like the
burning-building is happening everyday on a massive scale: spontaneous
abortion. According to various sources of medical data, roughly 50 percent of
all embryos two weeks old or younger are spontaneously aborted each year. To
use some raw numbers, it is estimated that roughly 200 million spontaneous
abortions occur each year.

These numbers may not carry much argumentative
weight by themselves, but if they are combined with the conservative claim that
embryos are persons with full moral status, it logically follows that roughly
50 percent of all human persons conceived each year die within two weeks of conception.
Or, that more than 200 million persons die each year from spontaneous abortion
alone. This is a remarkable result of accepting the conservative claim, so
remarkable that it should lead us to ask why, if we accept the conservative
claim, are we not advocating to combat this great loss of life, what Ord calls
"The Scourge"?

I'm not sure all of what this shows us about our
moral beliefs, but one thing it seems to show is that we don't believe that
human embryos and adult human persons have the same moral status. If we did, we
should expect to see many individuals and organizations attempting to eliminate
the occurrence of spontaneous abortion with as much or more effort and
resources as current attempts to eliminate cancer and various other deadly diseases.
As no disease, natural disaster, war, or human rights catastrophe has ever
killed so many persons as spontaneous abortion, we should expect that solving
this problem would be our top priority. But it isn't. When compared to the
likes of cancer or war, spontaneous abortion isn't even on our moral radar.

Ord takes this argument to be a sort of reductio of
the conservative claim because, while it doesn't show us that the conservative
claim logically entails a contradiction, it does show us that the conservative
claim logically entails a conclusion that we don't believe - that, for
instance, more than 200 million persons die each year from spontaneous abortion
and that we should be putting in immense effort to eliminate its occurrence. If
we don't believe that--which seems likely given our actions (or lack thereof)
and attitudes about spontaneous abortion--then it seems likely that we don't
believe the conservative claim upon which it rests. To the extent that we do
believe the conservative claim, this argument reveals a morally egregious
inconsistency between our actions and what we avow.

Assuming that this is right, where does this leave
us with the abortion debate? It certainly doesn't settle it, but Ord's argument
raises doubts about a fundamental premise often used in arguments against the
permissibility of abortion - the claim that human embryos are persons or the
related claim that personhood begins at conception. It raises doubts, not by
showing that these claims are false, but by showing that very few of us, if
any, actually believe them to be true.

A runaway
train hurtles towards 5 people tied to a track. A railroad switch
sits just a few feet from you. Flipping the switch diverts the train to another
track. A single person is tied to this other track.

Do you flip the
switch?

If you're like most
people, you do. Surveys show that around 90% of respondents say
they'd flip the switch. Their reason? Better to save 5 at the expense of
1.

Now imagine the same
scenario: A train is bearing down on 5 people tied to a track. Only this time
you're standing on a footbridge above the track. Next to you stands a
fat man. If pushed, the fat man will fall to his death, blocking the train
and saving the 5 people behind him.

Do you push him?

Most people—75% to 90%,
depending on which surveys you believe—don't push the fat man.

But what happened to
the logic of saving 5 at the expense of 1? What changed?

Some argue the salient
difference between the two cases is emotional. In the abstract, you're okay with
killing someone by pulling a lever, but you don't like pushing anybody.
Not only wouldn't you push someone, you also think it's wrong for someone else
to push the fat man.

In both cases, you've
made a moral judgment or an evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of
a given action. Our life is full of moral judgments, though fortunately most
don't involve locomotive catastrophe.

The field of moral
psychology asks how we make moral judgments. On this question, there are
two competing views: rationalism and sentimentalism.

As the name
suggests, rationalists believe that individual reason plays the primary
role in forming moral judgments. According to rationalism, moral dilemmas
engage our reasoning process. We call to mind the facts of the situation and
reflect on the relevant principles. When our internal dialectic ends, we
render moral judgment.

While rationalists
exalt reason, sentimentalists are decidedly more pessimistic about
its role in moral decision-making. According to sentimentalists, reason is
like a puppet show with emotions pulling the strings. Or, as psychologist
Jonathan Haidt puts it, emotion is the "dog wagging its
rationalist tail.” He offers an alternative to the rationalist model of moral
decision-making: the Social Intuitionist Model (SIM).

Like
all sentimentalists, Haidt believes that the majority of our moral judgments
are driven by emotional intuitions or instincts, not reasoned deliberation.
However, he introduces a new dimension to the discussion: social vs. private
decision-making.

According to Haidt, our
moral intuitions are rarely formed in a vacuum of private reflection.
Instead they are formed interpersonally. As social creatures, we look to
each other for clues about what to believe or how to act. A kind of finger
in the air. We are so adept at this that we often don't realize we are
aggregating and internalizing our neighbors’ beliefs. Once our social intuition
is formed, reason acts like a “press secretary,” assuming the podium only
to justify our intuitions to others. This is the basic insight of the
Social Intuitionist Model: that social forces shape the emotions that
determine our moral judgments.

This is a brief sketch
of two competing positions in the field of moral psychology: rationalism and
sentimentalism. Which do you find more compelling? Would you flip the switch
but not push the fat man? Why or why not?

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

One debate in philosophical theology is over whether God is
inside or outside of time.(There are
many debates “inside” that one, too, including over the nature of time.I’ll just sidestep those for now on the
grounds that you can’t solve every problem in a blog post.)I want to present a sketch of an argument for
the conclusion that God is outside of time.

Think of your own experience in time.I think in particular of regret about its
passage.Now you might regret the passage
of time because you made a bad decision, you are swept up in the consequences, and
you wish you could go back in time and change it.I suppose we all have that.But note that if God is in time, that’s not a
problem for God because God doesn’t make any regrettable decisions.(Unless Open Theism is true and God doesn’t
know the future.But let’s pretend Open
Theism is not true.I’m inclined to
think that most problems in philosophical theology get worse rather than better
with Open Theism . . .)

OK, think for a moment about the past, about a memory that
involves something wonderful that you cannot have back.In my case, I think of my children when they
were very young.Years ago I lived in
Kentucky, across the street from a dairy farm.I would regularly carry my infant son over there to watch the cows.For me that was a slice of heaven that I can
never have back, because I don’t live there anymore and, most notably, because
my son is too old to be carried like that.I regret that.Those days are gone, and there is absolutely nothing
I can do about it.When I ponder this I
feel trapped, swept along.I am a
prisoner of time.

But if God is in time, isn’t God trapped in exactly the same
way?If God took joy in the childhood of
my kids, God can’t get back to it any more than I can.(Of course, God remembers it better than I
do, but even perfect memory of an event is not the same as living it.)Or think about the glory of the
Resurrection:a good day on God’s
calendar, for sure, but also gone, irretrievably
gone, sweeping farther into the past with every passing day.And God, on this score, is just like me.God has reason for regretting that what is
past is gone.God lacks control over the
passage of time just like I do.

If this is a weakness in me – if I have regret in virtue of
being trapped in time, a prisoner to it – then I suggest that the same is true
of God, if God is in time.But it would be unbecoming for God to
experience regret in virtue of being trapped by anything.That wouldn’t be appropriate for the greatest
possible being!I suggest, then, that
these considerations about regret and the passage of time give us some reason
to think that God is in fact outside time, that God is not bound in time but
somehow transcends it.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

In this post, senior philosophy major Daniel Thweatt makes the case that forgiveness does not require repentance. A common view of forgiveness in the philosophical literature claims that in order for genuine forgiveness to occur, the offending party must recognize and repent of the offense; but Daniel argues that this is not so.

Daniel's topic brings to mind a song about forgiveness by Don Henley called "Heart of the Matter," and so, as a bonus, I include here a video of Henley performing that song live with the Eagles. Daniel's essay follows below.

Background Note

I will be assuming the view
of forgiveness that philosopher Jeffrie Murphy holds, where forgiveness is “the
overcoming, on moral grounds, of what I will call the vindictive passions --
the passions of anger, resentment, and even hatred that are often occasioned
when one has been deeply wronged by another.”

Forgiveness and
Repentance: Some Thoughts

Murphy and Charles Griswold
see a close connection between forgiveness and repentance. Murphy thinks it is
reasonable to condition forgiveness on the wrongdoer’s repentance, while
Griswold takes it that the notion of forgiveness is conceptually tied to
repentance such that if there is no repentance (or at least the willingness to
repent) by the wrongdoer, there is no forgiveness.

Murphy claims that making
forgiveness depend on the wrongdoer’s repentance can guard against “sacrificing
our self-respect or our respect for the moral order -- a respect that is often
evinced in resentment and other vindictive passions.” According to him,
“hastily forgiving” the wrongdoer may condone his or her action(s) and the
degrading message conveyed by it. Withholding forgiveness until repentance can
not only guard one against the harm of not showing self-respect, it can also
give the wrongdoer an incentive for “moral rebirth.” Likewise, Griswold warns that unconditional
forgiveness may condone or encourage wrongdoing, as well as damage victims’
self-respect.

I disagree. First, it seem to
me that there are counterexamples to this view. Consider, for example, the
priest who preemptively forgives Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. His act
seems to me to be both legitimate forgiveness and not any less morally
praiseworthy than an act of forgiveness done in response to repentance. I can
also think of instances in my own life where (I take it) I have genuinely and
rightly forgiven people despite their not repenting.

Second, and in continuation
of this thought, there seems to me to be a variety of morally justifying
grounds for forgiveness that do not require repentance.Consider these examples:God might command unconditional forgiveness;
forgiveness might help realize various goods in the wake of wrongdoing (such as
peace and the avoidance of cycles of revenge); forgiveness without repentance
may be necessary for the thriving, or perhaps even the possibility, of valuable
close relationships; and unconditional forgiveness could motivate moral reform
in the wrongdoer (as it apparently did with Jean Valjean). I do not take this
list to be exhaustive, but offer it as a selection of examples.

Moreover, it is not obvious
to me that unconditional forgiveness sacrifices one’s self-respect or respect
for the moral order. It seems entirely possible to conceive of oneself as having
inherent value and conceive of the wrong done to one as really wrong despite
unconditionally forgiving. The beliefs that “I have inherent value” and “What
person X did to me was wrong” and even “I am entitled to resentment/anger
towards person X for wronging me” seem compatible with the belief that “I
forgive person X (for reason Y)”. Moreover, belief in one’s inherent value and respect
for the moral order can be expressed in ways other than appropriate
vindictiveness, such as deep sadness over what was done (which I take to be
consistent with forgiveness) or verbal repudiation (unless this is an act of
revenge).

In addition, Murphy himself
outlines how a Christian worldview can furnish one with a conceptual framework
that can guard against a loss of self-respect and respect for the moral order
while unconditionally forgiving. Consider
two points he makes.First, on the
Christian view God will see to it that the moral calculus of the universe is
not ultimately out of balance. This, he says, can help one to “relax a bit the
clinch-fisted anger and resentment with which [one tries] to sustain [one’s]
self-respect and hold [one’s] world together all alone.” Second, on the Christian
view we are all loved by God and all created with inherent value as God’s
image-bearers. A firm commitment to these claims can shore up one’s
self-respect regardless of what is done to one.

It is also not obvious that unconditional
forgiveness risks condoning or encouraging wrongs. After all, the claim that
“You did something wrong and inexcusable to me” seems necessarily implicit in
the assertion that “I forgive you.”If
the wrong were excusable, then it would be excused, not forgiven. As
Murphy points out, excusing, unlike forgiveness, is a response to non-culpable
wrongdoing.Forgiveness, on the
other hand, responds to culpable wrongdoing. So, to communicate to someone that they have
been forgiven is necessarily to communicate to that person that they did
something wrong and are culpable for it. So forgiving doesn’t condone or encourage wrongs.

Moreover, there are ways to
discourage wrongdoing while at the same time unconditionally forgiving the
perpetrators.One might do so by way of verbal
repudiation, or by setting an example of virtuous character. One might also discourage wrongdoing by refusing
reconciliation under certain conditions, such as when responding to a
perpetually adulterous spouse, perhaps.The act of forgiveness itself in these situations may nonetheless so move
the unrepentant wrongdoer as to encourage or bring about moral reform.

All that being said, if
unconditional forgiveness does risk condoning or encouraging wrongs, it is not necessarily
to be faulted on that account. The pursuit or attainment of some goods often
comes at the expense of other goods. For example, to choose to become a surgeon
may mean forfeiting becoming a pastor. Similarly, spending more time with
family can entail spending less time with friends. If unconditionally forgiving in some
circumstances likewise entails risking being seen as condoning or encouraging
wrongs, I think it can be worth taking that risk.

I conclude that we can have
forgiveness without repentance.Such
forgiveness can be justified for all sorts of reasons; it need not have the
costs attributed to it by Murphy and Griswold; and even if it does, the
benefits could outweigh those costs.